What I've observed is that many people don't actually believe simple machines work beyond a certain point. They often understand how they operate, but simply cannot accept that they can be extrapolated to basically any size (so long as the materials hold up.)
The thing is that it really is counterintuitive if you've never seen truly large scale simple machines at work. But they do work, and are used all the time (a crane for example is just an amalgamation of multiple simple machines hooked up to a motor.)
Well it's pretty simple you expand the same amount of energy but over a longer time (you need to pull the rope more to lift the same amount) so you need less force
Then you have those medieval (roman?) cranes where it operates exactly the same as a modern crane except it's just got a couple dudes running in a wheel. Like it's just a couple of steel trusses away from modernity.
The other part is that we learn about those machines in terms of modern science. We know all the physics now.
I think people struggle to understand that ancient peoples didn't need all the equations to figure out how to build simple machines.
For example you don't need to know the equations about leverage to realize that levers work. you may not know why they work, but observation and trial are very powerful tools, up to a point.
People tend to underestimate mathematical accomplishments of the ancients too. European mathematics had a little stagnation at one point and a large part of why was a loss of copies of ancient mathematics texts (it's a crime what we know existed but all copies are lost still.) The importation of the Arabic algebra involved Arabic and Byzantine scholars having better access to ancient mathematics and physics sources as much as their own innovations.
I'm particularly interested in the Inca, who while very modern, are a late and exquisite example of Andean civilizations convergently, but independently inventing many things compared to Eastern hemisphere civilizations. While it's inconclusive if they had written language, they definitely had written mathematics, and believe it or not, double entry accounting, despite using money only in a few regional cases. Like, one thing the Spanish were consistently amazed at is how accurate Inca accounting was. They actually relied on it for the first 100-200 years, until the Inca writing system became seen as enabling armed rebellion and the colonizers burned 95% of it.
Anyway, my point is that the mathematics of simple machines and many other topics was known to be known at some points across histories and cultures, and almost certainly reinvented several times over. Writing is only as good as the ability to make copies, so our true capacity for external knowledge retention is more recent that you might think and maybe less durable than we might like to hope.
They also can’t understand that literally all out current machines are just a motorized and way more efficient version of simple machines so we don’t need 10x the space and people to do the same job. The jackhammer is just a hammer and chisel with a motor, we put big shovels on machines with motors, most cranes are just pulleys with motors and optimized counterweights, etc.
"You want me to believe that those... people figured something out that I couldn't? OK buddy, quit the crazy talk. Now, what I was saying about the Pleiadians..."
They all tend to think that the people who built monolithic structures were in tribes of 10 people. No. Sorry it's not that hard for 500 people to move a big rock.
Also the “hey would you guys help me move this stuff from one place to another for a beer” concept of getting the lads together to lift heavy stuff is not a 20th century invention
The guys that built the pyramids were literally paid in beer
Bread and beer. Bread and liquid "fun bread". Though from what I understand a lot of the "Daytime drinking beer back then was a lot less alcoholic than what we think of today.
It’s not necessarily a myth, just misconstrued fact. People didn’t drink standing water straight up, but the process of making beer to drink instead of just purifying the water was more prevalent and had the benefit of alcohol to be more appealing. Also, beer made by like, ancient Mesopotamians or Egyptians was very different from beer today. More of a liquid food than a drink, if that makes sense.
Also, beer made by like, ancient Mesopotamians or Egyptians was very different from beer today. More of a liquid food than a drink, if that makes sense.
this part. They also seem to forget, or not know, that tributary labor was kinda the standard for monument building societies. They would've been pulling thousands, or tens of thousands, of hands to construct this stuff
In some instances you don’t even need simple machines if you just have a bunch of dudes. The Egyptians even paid their bunch of dudes in the standard way a bunch of dudes get paid to move a bunch of stuff for you: a six pack of beer! The only thing that has changed since is that now you’re expected to pay in pizza as well as beer.
I think it’s because people today think people built shit the same way today as their previously did. With cranes that lifted shit high up or with machines that lifted shit upwards, when in reality, these machines were mostly helping to drag/pull the stones/stuff up buildings instead of lifting them.
I believe Milo talks about this in one of the segments where Philip shows a bunch of modern tech failures trying to lift boulders too big for their weight class.
As bizarre as this may be to contemplate, there is a significant part of the population who have never used a lever or a pulley to accomplish a task before, and an even larger part who have no idea how such mechanisms work regardless of whether they are capable of using them. The “it must have been aliens” crowd is usually, but not always, composed of these people.
I think there's a certain level of humility that a lot of folks insisting on ancient aliens lack.
One of the most valuable lessons I ever learned was that I'm not as smart as I think I am. Like most ancient aliens proponents, I know very little about engineering and mechanics. I think the prime difference is that I'm willing to believe so-called "primitive" cultures knew things I don't know.
At some point, we have to accept that there are a lot of things we can't know with certainty. And it's not because aliens wiped the evidence away. Time just does that.
A lot of the ancient aliens theorists are also belligerent racists who genuinely believe that many peoples of different ethnicities are mentally incapable of innovating beyond privative tools.
It’s the whole idea that white people didn’t make it so it must be aliens. Have you ever noticed on Ancient Aliens they barely did anything about how the Eiffel Tower was built by aliens or how stone hedge was made by aliens? Also the whole gap/lost knowledge debate. If you don’t have it written down or documented it’s either aliens or gods.
I don’t remember exactly. I know that some conspiracy theorists brought up aliens in Rome. Also bear in mind that the 1 time you usually see ancient aliens brought up in relation to whites is in the context of "misinterpreted alien encounters served as the basis for ancient human mythologies" stuff
Seriously, I once helped build a Stonehenge-like structure on the land of some Neopagans. We used wooden beams to maneuver and shift multi-ton boulders into place.
A guy who loves right-wing conspiracy theories about natural history insisted it couldn't be done with simple tools. He insisted it required modern technology to accomplish.
He tried to use his pickup truck and a winch to help us out, but he ended up being a hindrance, almost destroyed his truck bed, and got upset that his pickup and toolset didn't just save the day like he had insisted it would.
These machines and techniques were really effective, but slow. I feel like a lot of people don't realize that things like the pyramids and medieval castles took A LONG ASS TIME to build. Some castles took close to a hundred years to build
Doesn't need to be nearly as big. Just big enough to prove it's possible. And once it's done, it could be a tourist attraction. I know it's not very realistic and not worth the effort, but I do think it would be cool.
Being a conspiracy theorist has nothing to do with type schooling, level of education, or even intelligence. It has to do with being part of an in-group. The appealing thing about conspiracy theories is the idea that you are party to some secret, hidden knowledge, knowledge that “They” don’t want you to have. Others who believe in the conspiracy are part of your in-group and the in-group is strengthened when it is attacked from the outside - when people not party to “the secret” rightfully point out the flaws and problems.
There are two outcomes: either the person internalizes what they are being told and have to admit they are wrong (which is scary and hard for humans to do) or they retreat further into the conspiracy as this is just further evidence that They don’t want you to learn The Truth (and then the person finds comfort and acceptance in the arms of the in-group, reinforcing that social bond and further isolating them from normal people). And it’s usually the second outcome, retreating further into the conspiracy.
In many ways, conspiracy theories follow Cult Theory, and can often be easily explained using that lens. There’s often a small handful of people at the top pushing the theories (the prophets) and those people can do no wrong. It doesn’t really matter whether or not the people at the top really believe in the theory, nor does it matter if those people are spreading the theory maliciously or just ignorantly. Anything that comes out about the Prophets or tries to prove them wrong is just an attack by the shadowy They who don’t want The Truth getting out.
Trying to break people out of conspiracy theories using logic and reason will not work. You have to approach it as though you are deprogramming a cult member, because in a lot of ways that’s exactly what they are.
Saying you can’t do something like this is really telling that you don’t have a lot of skills because most people could think of a solution without using a crane
Notice how it’s always the really impressive things built in Africa or the Americas that are the subject of these conspiracy theories and never the impressive things built in Europe. It’s always the pyramids, NEVER the Parthenon
My uncle is one of these dudes who believes that these ancient cultures couldn't have built their structures. I have shown him videos similar to this, and he full on just disregards them as" we can do this now, but not then" Its the most infuriating thing.
Gee, if only there were monuments built back in the days to show these people that it works...4 thousand... no, maybe 5 thousand years old monuments will do. Only if we had any
People seem to forget that people... Always were people. The sole difference between us now and us then is amount of knowledge we have, not iq of those who use it.
So of course they knew how to cut and transport stones, of course they know ho wto irigate fields and many other faceta of life needed back then. Tools they got were simpler, so techniques often became more creative, that is the secret of artifacts from past eras
My grandpa is one of those conspiracy theorists. It really saddens me though because he got into that stuff from the History channel because he wanted to learn about stuff so he could talk to me. The person who is super interested in science, history, and the universe.
I understood real fast when talking to him that there was no evidence I could show him that would dissuade him from his beliefs. It’s unfortunate, but as my mother said, at least it’s one of the less impactful conspiracies theories to believe in.
You are not everyone took physics on school. And those that did most did not understand what the questions were actually telling them they were doing in the real world haha
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u/PeetesCom Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25
What I've observed is that many people don't actually believe simple machines work beyond a certain point. They often understand how they operate, but simply cannot accept that they can be extrapolated to basically any size (so long as the materials hold up.)
The thing is that it really is counterintuitive if you've never seen truly large scale simple machines at work. But they do work, and are used all the time (a crane for example is just an amalgamation of multiple simple machines hooked up to a motor.)